Op-Ed Letters to the Editor
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson was on Long Island on the evening of Sat., July
13, when a blackout hit his West Side Council District 3. But he rushed right back to
the city and kept New Yorkers updated with a flurry of informative tweets. Mayor
de Blasio, meanwhile, did not return from Iowa until 12:30 p.m. the next afternoon,
prompting some to say it was yet another sign that Johnson is the “de facto mayor.”
Fear cars,
not bikes
To The Editor:
Re “Sharing the city streets”
(editorial, July 18):
Thanks for shooting down
the “New York City is not Europe”
jive, and it is certainly
incumbent upon bicyclists to
be mindful and considerate of
pedestrians. But there is such
a double standard around this
question.
So far this year, 81 pedestrians
in New York have been
killed in traffi c “accidents.” Exactly
one of those deaths was
caused by a bicyclist — and it
was the fi rst since 2017.
When the anti-bike brigade
that haunts The Villager’s
comments start to express a
little concern over the neardaily
carnage caused by motorists,
maybe I will take them a
little more seriously.
Bill Weinberg
He’s fresh,
exciting
To The Editor:
Re “In blackout, Johnson
shines, Blaz fi zzles” (news article,
July 18):
Corey Johnson is a magnifi -
cent, fresh and smart voice in
New York City politics. I followed
all his Twitter posts for
blackout info. Very reassuring.
Thank you, Corey.
Bonnie Stein
Monumental
statue debate
To The Editor:
Re “Harlem historian: Suffragettes
statue is ‘racist’”
(news article, thevillager.com,
July 11):
If Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony were
champions of “white women’s
suffrage” and Sojourner Truth
and Ida B. Wells were champions
of “universal suffrage,”
wouldn’t it be improper to
combine all of the fi gures in
one monument?
There should be two separate
monuments.
It’s wrong to “label” a monument
honoring two very worthy
historical fi gures who lived
more than 100 years ago as
“racist.” Was their work predominantly
racist, in the context
of their time — or feminist?
Should Meredith Bergmann
now destroy her beautiful
monument?
All I can say is that 2020
will mark the centenary of my
mother’s birth, and I will be
pleased to see a new monument,
or two new monuments,
executed by an acclaimed
PHOTO BY WILLIAM ALATRISTE/NYC COUNCIL
woman sculptor, in Central
Park.
Harry Pincus
What Fred said
To The Editor:
Re “Harlem historian: Suffragettes
statue is ‘racist’”
(news article, thevillager.com,
July 11):
Frederick Douglass said:
“When there were few houses
in which the black man could
have put his head, this wooly
head of mine found refuge in
the house of Mrs. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, and if I had
been blacker than sixteen midnights,
without a single star,
it would have been the same.
There is no name greater than
hers in the matter of woman’s
rights and equal rights.”
Coline Jenkins
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published.
Affordability could
fl y at old airfi eld
BY LYNN ELLSWORTH
There are many weaknesses to Mayor de Blasio’s trickledown
approach to affordable housing. One is that it
abandons direct provision of housing at the low end
of the market and ignores the need to make housing permanently
affordable.
Just as bad, every city initiative related to housing has become
a partnership with a big-shot developer, with all the cost
and profi t biases, the distorted set of winners and losers, and
all the negative social costs that such a partnership with Big
Real Estate entails. If de Blasio really cared about housing
supply, he would be much more aggressive about building 100
percent permanently affordable units on public land using the
land trust model.
By foot-dragging on the public land trust approach, de Blasio
and his team are leaving amazing housing opportunities
on the table without a fi ght. I see three examples of public
land that de Blasio has not fought for, where an excellent case
can be made that the properties should be given over to a public
land trust for permanently affordable housing — namely,
two sites at the World Trade Center complex and the entirety
of Floyd Bennett Field.
World Trade Center Site 5 is the site of the former Deutsche
Bank. Strangely, the Port Authority and Lower Manhattan
Development Corporation have recently decided they want to
sell that site off to the highest private-sector bidder for roughly
$300 million. The governor is apparently gung-ho for the
idea, if his release of a request for proposals, or R.F.P., for the
site is an indicator of his thinking.
It all means the World Trade Center site will see yet another
glass tower with a mix of luxury offi ce and luxury retail,
instead of what we need there, which is either low-income
housing or a park that isn’t for tourists. The mayor ought to
be fi ghting for these sites, battling the questionable theory of
“highest and best use” for disposition of public land.
The other public land on the W.T.C. complex that is bizarrely
not devoted to housing is the site that is supposedly
slated for a boondoggle of a performing arts center — a glassy
box designed by Frank Gehry, for which the funding has not
yet been found. That funding is utterly dependent on private
philanthropy — much like “Diller Island,” off of W. 14th St.,
a billionaire’s private project. What a silly diversion of private
philanthropic money which ought to be better allocated to the
renovation of the public Delacorte Theater in Central Park, an
actual theater in desperate need of funding!
Meanwhile, Floyd Bennett Field has about 1,000 acres under
federal control. Given that Trump is a real estate developer
and dislikes the E.P.A., isn’t it worth trying to get the
airfi eld back under municipal control for housing? The place
is not “nature” but an abandoned airfi eld with a lot of asphalt.
Think what 1,000 acres could do if it was in a public land
trust devoted to affordable housing on a human (say, R6 residential
zoning) scale!
The point of these examples is to illustrate the dangers of
relying on “public private partnerships” to build affordable
housing: The approach blinds us to the 100-percent public
opportunities staring us in the face. We clearly need a new
policy that builds up our land assets for affordable housing
rather than sells public land off to developers.
It is timely to raise the issue since the next election cycle is
coming. So who among the mayoral contenders will embrace
a different approach to housing that is not de Blasio 2.0?
Ellsworth is co-founder, Human-scale NYC, and chairperson,
Tribeca Trust
Schneps Media TVG July 25, 2019 13
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